A typical portable floor system as is used as a dance floor is made of a plurality of interlocking panels each having at least one absorption layer and at least one load-distributing layer connected thereto. Such a system is used for ballet, dance, theater, acrobatics, circus or the like, to spare the joints of the actors. It must be possible to easily and rapidly assemble and disassemble the floors and they must be storable and transportable with low space requirements. Also, the weight per unit area and the storage volume should be low with respect to the transport.
Currently, there are floor coverings on the market that have very good shock-absorbing properties. In some cases, however, on the one hand, they can only be assembled and disassembled with considerable effort and, on the other, due to their thickness and weight, are difficult to store as well as difficult and costly to transport.
For this reason, portable floor panels are known from the prior art that always are based on a composite of an approximately 20 mm thick wooden or laminated board as load-distributing layer and plastic packs attached thereto that form the absorption layer. The connection of the individual floor panels takes place via a groove and tooth system or other interlocking formations.
Similar constructions are used for permanent installations. Floors constructed in such a manner are called area-elastic floors.
Another possibility to obtain a shock-absorbing floor is the use of materials that damp over the full surface such as foam mats with suitable upper floors that are in most cases PVC floors. With this construction, mixed elastic floors are achieved that, however, are always adhered to the subfloor and thus cannot be considered portable.
The problem is that for achieving a suitable mixed elastic floor, on the one hand, it is necessary to glue a plurality of layers with different stiffnesses and damping characteristics together, but, on the other, due to the desired low volume, a total thickness of approximately 1.5 centimeters is not to be exceeded. Such thin floor panels do not allow an integration of usual interlocking formations.
Moreover, the individual plies in case of permanent installations are usually processed only with weak adhesives because with a strong adhesive bond, a sandwich would be created that would destroy the shock absorbing properties.